The Guest of Quesnay eBook

Evening papers reported that Harman was “lingering.”
He was lingering the next day. He was lingering
the next week, and the end of a month saw him still
“lingering.” Then I went down to Capri,
where—­for he had been after all the merest
episode to me—­I was pleased to forget all
about him.

CHAPTER III

A great many people keep their friends in mind by
writing to them, but more do not; and Ward and I belong
to the majority. After my departure from Paris
I had but one missive from him, a short note, written
at the request of his sister, asking me to be on the
lookout for Italian earrings, to add to her collection
of old jewels. So, from time to time, I sent
her what I could find about Capri or in Naples, and
she responded with neat little letters of acknowledgment.

Two years I stayed on Capri, eating the lotus which
grows on that happy island, and painting very little—­only
enough, indeed, to be remembered at the Salon and
not so much as knowing how kindly or unkindly they
hung my pictures there. But even on Capri, people
sometimes hear the call of Paris and wish to be in
that unending movement: to hear the multitudinous
rumble, to watch the procession from a cafe terrace
and to dine at Foyot’s. So there came at
last a fine day when I, knowing that the horse-chestnuts
were in bloom along the Champs Elysees, threw my rope-soled
shoes to a beggar, packed a rusty trunk, and was off
for the banks of the Seine.

My arrival—­just the drive from the Gare
de Lyon to my studio—­was like the shock
of surf on a bather’s breast.

The stir and life, the cheerful energy of the streets,
put stir and life and cheerful energy into me.
I felt the itch to work again, to be at it, at it
in earnest—­to lose no hour of daylight,
and to paint better than I had painted!

Paris having given me this impetus, I dared not tempt
her further, nor allow the edge of my eagerness time
to blunt; therefore, at the end of a fortnight, I
went over into Normandy and deposited that rusty trunk
of mine in a corner of the summer pavilion in the
courtyard of Madame Brossard’s inn, Les Trois
Pigeons, in a woodland neighborhood that is there.
Here I had painted through a prolific summer of my
youth, and I was glad to find—­as I had
hoped—­nothing changed; for the place was
dear to me. Madame Brossard (dark, thin, demure
as of yore, a fine-looking woman with a fine manner
and much the flavour of old Norman portraits) gave
me a pleasant welcome, remembering me readily but
without surprise, while Amedee, the antique servitor,
cackled over me and was as proud of my advent as if
I had been a new egg and he had laid me. The
simile is grotesque; but Amedee is the most henlike
waiter in France.